An amazing spectacle, this eighteenth-century march to Tyburn, revealing as completely as the roofless city of romance the human animal taken unawares. No braver picture of dauntless courage ever has been displayed in battlefield than the serene victim, tied and bound, who is drawn along slowly to his shameful death. Though the deep toll of St Sepulchre’s passing bell may beat in cruel blows against his heart, as he moves past the old church at whose font his brothers and sisters were given their Christian names, there is no tremor visible to the thousands who gloat upon his form. Down the slopes of Snow Hill runs the quick, eager whisper, for the eyes of all seek but one man, “Which is Mr Ryland?” And the careless murmur swells into a louder key, “There he is in the coach--that is he--that is Ryland”--the heartless babble of a multitude of savages. Thicker and thicker teems the concourse, as the procession crawls over the bridge and up Holbourn Hill, swollen like a black, turgid river by streams that flow from haunts of filth and foulness--the sweepings of the slums. Thieves, cut-throats, hoarse drunkards, and shrill strumpets join in the delirious march with the loud, mad tread of a thousand clattering feet. Thus they move onward. Within the sable coach the smug Ordinary is mumbling scraps of Holy Writ pertaining to the time and place, the valley of the shadow of death. In response, a hundred ribald oaths and loathsome jests are pealing all around. Within the sable coach the poor ecstatic housebreaker is piping a quavering hymn, his joints shaking in palsy, his eyes, which gleam in horrible whiteness, raised to the skies. All around, the hands of a hundred thieves are busy at work as they tramp along in this march to the grave. Beyond Chancery Lane the wide thoroughfare seems to pass into a new world. Although the street echoes still to the tread of ten thousand squalid footsteps, high up on either side, at the windows or in the narrow balconies, wealth and beauty take their part in the mighty spectacle. Sweet, pale faces look down, while soft, heaving bosoms press the casements. Beings who might soar amidst the stars are sunk in the mire--all compelled by the haunting, irresistible tramp rolling onward in the march of death.